Rooftop beekeeper

A recent Thursday: Spencer Marshall methodically zipped a white bee suit from his waist to his chin, then pulled a meshed hood over his head to protect himself from venomous harm. Only after he was all secure did he light a piece of burlap, put it in a tin smoker and start replacing the beehives in the rooftop garden at the Fairmont Hotel.

Patrons of the hotel were none the wiser as thousands of bees swarmed the skyline just above Marshall’s head. It was business as usual for the hotel, for Marshall and for his bees.

Marshall, 69, has worked with bees for 40 years and manages more than 500 hives in 70 locations all over the Bay Area. His organic honey operation, Marshall’s Farm Honey in American Canyon near Napa, produces more than 50,000 pounds of honey per year. He has a pretty good idea of what kind of conditions bees need to make copious amount of honey.

You wouldn’t think the Fairmont roof would supply those conditions. Marshall himself was skeptical when the hotel’s chef asked him four years ago if he would bring some of his bees to the Nob Hill landmark to exchange for earmarking a modest amount of honey for the kitchen – 10 pounds a year per hive, to be exact.

Still, he said OK. And last year, four double-queen hives atop the Fairmont produced more than 1,000 pounds of honey. “In this day and age,” Marshall said, “that’s unheard of.”

“We’re right up here where the wind is always blowing … and all you see is concrete, asphalt and big huge high-rise buildings. You don’t see any fields of flowers,” Marshall said.

“I really can’t explain it. The only thing I can think that makes sense to me is they have very little competition, and the weather must be just right for them.”

Marshall comes from a long line of beekeepers. His great-grandmother raised hives in the Yellowstone area, and Marshall helped his grandmother work a few hives on the family farm in Lodi growing up. But bees and honey weren’t Marshall’s first vocational choice.

As a young man he worked on television productions, taught and even did a stint as a carpenter, but nothing felt like the perfect fit. Then his father was paralyzed in a car accident, and Marshall came home to help run the corn and wheat farm.

To keep his “sanity,” he said, he took up beekeeping as a hobby.

“I kept doing bees, kept doing bees – and one day I asked myself, what’s wrong with bees?” he said. “It’s what I wanted to do. It’s what I read about; it’s what I thought about. It was like, oh yeah, this is it! I don’t have to search anymore.”

Four decades and 35,000 stings later, he still loves it.

“I’m almost like a doctor, where I’m going into the hive and figuring out what’s going on and what kind of help they need,” Marshall said. “You know, trying to make them stronger, healthier, more productive.

“You’re not just punching a clock. You’re involved in something bigger than yourself.”